Posts Tagged ‘Christ Church’

Monday, I sent out a blog inspired by Mother Eileen’s sermon at Christ Church on Sunday and forwarded her a copy as she is not on my list. She wrote back the following day and jokingly suggested I might preach this Sunday, which led me to think about what I would preach. What would I say if I had to, this Sunday, preach at a church?

I looked up the gospel for next Sunday and its essential line is: many are called but few are chosen.

Certainly, that fits with last year’s election cycle which started with more candidates for the Republican nomination for president than I remember in my life. Many were called and, in the end, the one that was chosen was Donald Trump and he went on to become President of these United States.

It will probably surprise many who know me but every week at church I light a candle for the man. No, I don’t like him. His policies seem mean spirited, quixotic at best. His relationship with the truth, as I experience it, is equally quixotic.

And he is President of these United States, a man with great power, influence and the ability to shake the world on more levels than I believe he is aware of or understands. But he is the president and I pray for him, hoping, on a very fundamental level he doesn’t do anything that will prevent me from being back at church next Sunday to pray for him.

He appealed to a disenfranchised part of America we, all of us, have not been listening to or acknowledging. They gravitated to Donald Trump as people in the water after the loss of Titanic, desperate to be saved, crying for help. Do I think he will save them? No.

But I want us to hear their cries and find a way to address them and to help them. They are Americans. With very real issues.

Today I read there are the most job openings than there have been for a very long time. Those jobs are harder to fill because we have a massive opioid crisis and many people cannot pass drug tests. Companies are beginning, in desperation, to turn a blind eye, not asking for drug tests for dangerous jobs because they can’t find enough people to fill them.

Not so long ago, there were two Amtrak employees killed, men not much younger than me and their autopsies revealed they had non-prescribed opioids in their systems. Our local paper, the Register Star, gave a face to the epidemic by highlighting on the front page a young woman, full of hope, who overdosed.

It is time we faced this epidemic, its causes and its ravages and did something and quit pretending everything is going along just fine.

President Trump, weren’t you going to make this a national emergency? What happened?

Nothing much. Why not?

Even the beauty of the cottage is not soothing my soul these days. What am I to do?

Many are called but few are chosen. What is it I am called to do in this tumultuous time? Every day I ask myself that question. What am I to do? What am I called to do?

Whether you are a supporter of Donald Trump or not, what is that you can do, personally, to change the awful things that are happening in this country?

Many are called, few are chosen. What will make me chosen? What thing can I do to make this awful time better? I want to. I do and I am not sure what it is that I should do. Pack a bag and fly to some war-torn part of the world and put up my hand and say: I’m here to help? What can I do?

A friend suggested I do that. Maybe I will.

We all need to ask ourselves how we are going to respond to Jesus’ call? I am not a raving evangelical. Far from that. I respect, at the deepest level of my soul, the kindness Jesus worked to insert into the human dialogue and which has resonated for both good and ill since then.

Since I was a boy, I have thought Jesus would be appalled at what has happened to what he started. He preached love and love is not often what has happened.

Many are called but few will be chosen. Be one of the few. Practice what Jesus taught.

Darkness has descended on the Hudson Valley; it is pitch black outside though I am heartened everyday by the weather person’s announcement we had three or so more minutes of daylight today than yesterday.

I’ve adjusted the timers on lights to accommodate the increasing daylight.I rejoice as I am sure everyone does.

My dining room table is scattered with recipes from which I will choose the ones being made for Easter.I am getting it organized. I bought upgraded plastic silverware for Sunday.Since I am doing this, I want it to be a little special — or a lot special.

In the morning I will winnow down the recipes and head out to do my shopping.My friend Robert has given me eight dozen eggs from the chickens who live at his house down in Rhinebeck.I had some for lunch.There is nothing like farm fresh eggs!

While I am typing this, Christ Church is celebrating Maundy Thursday and I wasn’t feeling very churchy tonight so I didn’t go.

Probably feeling more churchy than I do, or at least one would hope so, is Radovan Karadzic, the former Serb leader who was convicted today of genocide during the horrific Serbian conflict twenty-one years ago.Eight thousand Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in a town called Srebrenica.Justice finally has been done though it will not bring back those men and boys whose only crime was that they were born Muslim.

At the time, when it was revealed, I felt horror and I feel it today.There was a time when such things happened to Christians; indeed, they are happening today to Christians at the hands of IS.It is things like Srebrenica that make IS feel justified.

It’s been a happy day for me, feeling far from all the world’s troubles, tooling around Columbia County, collecting mail, a couple of meetings with organizations I am volunteering with, a haircut, bumping into people on the street and having a good conversation with them.

While I was doing those fun things, the police in Paris foiled an alleged terror attack in advanced stages.Obama apologized in Argentina for some of our policies and actions during their long and very dirty internal war.I suspect we turned too blind an eye to some things.

Belgium and Europe in general are struggling to balance freedom and safety in the fight against terrorist attacks.

In America, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are exploiting our fears in their campaigns; loudly criticized and, I think, rightly so, by Obama.And I think by Hillary and Bernie, too.

Syrian troops loyal to Assad are in the suburbs of Palmyra in the early stages of reclaiming the city from IS, which has this year lost 21% of the territory it controlled.The monuments destroyed are gone and it will be good if the city can be liberated.It has suffered terribly.

At the same time, Iraqi troops are advancing into Mosul, using lessons from the recapture of Ramadi to help them win back this important Iraqi city.Many of the historical treasures there are gone also, never to be seen again.

I do not live in their mindset and cannot come close to comprehending why it was necessary for them to destroy the heritage of the planet.But they did.It ranks up there with the killings at Srebrenica.Maybe it doesn’t.At Srebrenica those were living beings that were destroyed.At Palmyra and Mosul, it was the artifacts of the past that helped create the world in which we now live.

There are echoes of that world here in the cottage.I have treasured artifacts from the past and things that echo them.Someday, when I am gone, all this will be scattered, some thrown away but in the time they have had with me I have been grateful for their presence.

There is a small collection of masks, a recreation of a bust of Athena from Greece, a painting from India that evokes Alexander, a Renoir re-strike, a wonderful painting from a Provincetown gallery of Alexander.

We need the past to build the future, to connect ourselves from where we were to where we are going.

The coastline of the United States has been brutalized by Winter Storm Jonas.I fled on Friday so that I could be at home when he/it hit.However, strangely enough, not a flake of snow has fallen in Columbia County.It has been cold with a bruising wind but nothing like the snow in the city.

JFK had 30 inches of snow on the runway with thousands of canceled flights.My friend Larry was stranded in the city on the way to spend her birthday with his wife in Mexico.My friend Jerry was on one of the last flights out before they shut the airport down.

And here we are, in great shape.It was my intention to go to the city tomorrow afternoon and I think I won’t, giving New York a few more days to clean itself up before I head in.

Down in Washington, DC my nephew Kevin is part of a group of volunteers who are shoveling the walks of the elderly and shut-ins.So like Kevin, which is one of the reasons I am so proud of him.

In one of the most tragic of storm related deaths, a good Samaritan pulled over to help a motorist who had slid off the road only to have the motorist shoot him to death.

Up early today, I prepped for class this week, went to church.

It is my habit these days to light candles at church for a variety of things — a friend in the UK who is fighting a brain tumor, another friend whose daughter is suffering from traumatic brain disorder, for myself, for the world in which live.Today there was only one match and so I managed to light only one candle for all those things.

I started lighting candles as thanks and hope when I was in my early teens after an incident in which I nearly drowned.

Following church, I was off to the Dot where I sat doing lesson plans until I either had to order or not.After Eggs Benedict on potato latkes, I headed home to do some more work.

One of the things I did was to log on to Twitter and follow #Transformfilmsinc.

Transform Films is premiering a film at Sundance this year, “Newtown.”It follows the ravaging of lives that has occurred since the mass shooting there a little over three years ago.Nick Stuart, my best friend, is Executive Producer.

As I type, they are screening.

As I grow older, I am aware how lucky I am and have been.I have had Death nip at my heels a couple of times and am still here to tell the tale.The loss of my friend Paul has been sobering and a reminder of my own mortality.

It is the course of life.None of us get out of here alive.

While I am here, I will continue to observe and to comment as best I can, savoring the ability to shape words to some meaning.

In the fireplace, a small fire is burning.The dishwasher is running.The flood lights illuminate the creek.I have missed Snowmaggedon.

To my political amazement, Trump has gained 15 points in the last two weeks in Iowa.The Donald is a juggernaut to be sure.

In film, everyone I know is talking up Leonardo di Caprio’s “The Revenant.”So much so I feel I must see it sooner than later.I am late to seeing “Star Wars.” I will, eventually but my passion for The Force has cooled.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, also has another company, Blue Origins.It successfully sent up a rocket and had it return to land upright, successfully, twice now.Pretty impressive, I think.One more step to realizing the reach out to space.

One of the things that has saddened me in my life was that having once reached the moon, we seemed to stop striving.Now it is Internet billionaires who are revitalizing the race to space.Good for them.

Well, I was smart enough today to not look at the market as it was another BAD day as China’s market shudders riled every other market in the world.While they were plunging, I had a pleasant day.

Answered emails, ran errands and wrote out the first draft of my syllabus for my class that starts on the 20th.It was actually kind of fun, if headache inducing.

Now it is evening and I have turned on the lights outside, classic jazz is playing and I think I will light a fire as it is going to be chill again tonight.

My Christmas tree is still up and I am not taking it down until Sunday.Having been gone for two weeks, I feel I deserve a little more time with it.It is a white artificial tree and I think this is its last year.But it has been a beautiful, for me, tree.

Jamison Teale, the Senior Warden at Christ Church [where I attend services] and his longtime companion, James, were married on New Year’s Day by Hudson’s first woman mayor in her first official function.They are coming for dinner on Saturday with the church’s Musical Director, Tom Martin, father to Mayor Tiffany Martin Hamilton of Hudson.

One of my errands today was to find them a small wedding present.

While James and Jamison married easily here in New York, the Chief Justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court, Roy Moore, has ordered that state’s probate judges notissue marriage licenses to gay couples.Federal authorities immediately ordered them to do so.Some have thrown up their arms and aren’t giving marriage licenses to anyone.

Ah, Justice Moore, this has been decided.No back pedaling allowed I think.

One probate judge, Tommy Ragland, summed it up best, saying, “We have a Chief Justice who is confused.”

One of the other errands I did today was to look for a clock radio to replace my ancient one that no longer works.You know, they are rather hard to find.Not nonexistent but hard to find.I am going online to see what I can find there.

My toaster also broke and I looked at those too and thought they all looked shoddy.More investigation needed.

It is the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.Let there be a moment of silence.

The French police killed a man brandishing a meat cleaver today, who was screaming “Allahu Akbar [God is Greatest].”He was wearing a fake suicide vest.That confuses me.Why bother?

Oklahoma had a swarm of 70 earthquakes yesterday.In 2013 they had a couple of hundred.In 2014 they had over 5,000.That is an exponential increase.2015 statistics are currently being gathered.There is a suspect:fracking.

Earlier this week Netflix was available in 60 countries.Today it is in 190 countries.130 countries “turned on” Netflix while its President and CEO was giving a speech at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

I’ve attended a couple and they are always mind boggling.This year is not quite so much according to pundits but still generating lots of wow.

Politics continues.Bill Clinton is stumping for Hillary in Iowa.Lots of people I know would like him back but since he can’t….

Cruz is cruising in Iowa which frightens the bejesus out of me.

California is pummeled by storms and that worries me about friends there though I hope it is helping the drought.

In Burns, Oregon the unlawful occupation of a wildlife center continues.On social media people have been asking what would be happening if the occupiers were black or Muslim instead of gun totting white guys who are outraged over Federal land policy?

There are no easy answers to anything.Kerry says that the Saudi Arabia/Iran feud will not slow down the Syrian peace process but how can it not?I mean, how can it not?

I am taking solace in the cottage and in my hope that our better angels will prevail.

Once again, I am headed south on the train to the city, doing a round trip. I have a lunch in the city and then I am turning around and getting out of Dodge and won’t be back until Monday, when I come into town for a couple of days of meetings and Howard’s podcast taping. His podcast is “Howard Bloom Saves the Universe” and is available on iTunes and other podcasting sites. Check it out. He’s great!

The day is another beautiful one. Yesterday was a perfect fall day with the temperature reaching seventy degrees while cool enough at night to justify the use of the Franklin stove. Walking through the neighborhood, I savored the muted colors and the light on the pond into which my creek flows.

In a way the day felt like an interlude, despite being glued to the screen of my laptop. I didn’t notice much about the world and reveled mostly in the comfort of my cottage.

Yesterday was Election Day. In Hudson, our county’s “big city,” there was a hotly contested Mayoral race that appears the Democrat won. Absentee ballots are yet to be counted though those mostly tend toward Democrats. If it holds, Tiffany Martin Hamilton will be the first Democratic Mayor of Hudson in my memory.

She’s the daughter of the choir director at Christ Church, where I attend services.

Around the country, conservatives had a big night. They voted down an LGBT anti-discrimination effort in Houston and booted the Democrats out of the Kentucky Governor’s mansion.

Pundits this morning, as I was driving to the station, posited that Democrats were not well organized and Conservatives were. In all these places, voter turnout was low. I feel such frustration when people don’t vote.

As I continue, I am sitting in the Acela Lounge, watching CNN on the monitor. There is a live “incident” near the San Diego airport; a shooter is active and planes are being diverted. The shooter has a high-powered rifle and has come close to hitting police.

They are also talking about a nine year old African American boy in Chicago who has died in gun violence, shot multiple times. Mayor Rahm is saying there is a “special place” for the person who did this. I agree.

At UC Merced, there were five people stabbed before police killed the man wielding the knife.

David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has delayed flights to and from Sharm el Sheikh while a British team makes a determination about security at the airport there. Cameron and the Brits are concerned that a bomb may have brought down the Russian plane recently, losing all aboard, including 25 children. American Intelligence is suggesting the same.

An affiliate of IS claims responsibility.

A Russian built cargo plane went down yesterday in the Sudan. Children were some of the victims there too.

Justin Trudeau has been sworn in a Prime Minister of Canada and half his cabinet is female. It is, after all, 2015, he points out.

Now that we are two years into Obamacare, a map of the uninsured shows that most of them are in the South and Southwest. Surpised?

And the death rate for middle aged white men who have not received a high school degree has skyrocketed. One article suggests they are dying of despair.

All this violence and despair are hard to imagine as I head back north, the sun just beginning to set in the west, the sun a bright slash across the river. It is peaceful; I am in the café car, sipping a wine and writing, heading north to my cottage, after a good lunch with friends, all soft and right in my world while knowing it is not soft and right in so many other places.

It is a stunningly beautiful day here in Claverack. The creek is a mirror of the trees above it, the sun is beginning to descend in the west, the temperature is perfect and I am savoring every moment I get to be out on the deck.

Those days are numbered. I needed to wait awhile this morning to come out here, as it was just a bit too cool when I woke up.

There hasn’t been a letter for a couple of days. I’ve been busy. Yesterday I drove down to Norwalk in Connecticut for lunch with a good, old friend, Bob Altman, who is the king of recipe videos. He’s done thousands of them.

We toured his studio and then went down to the beach for lunch. I had no idea Norwalk was on the water until yesterday.

It was a five-hour journey both ways but very much worth it. On the drive, I listened almost exclusively to NPR, catching up on what they were saying about the world.

There were interviews with Syrian refugees, men and women who had lives there but have found their towns destroyed. Fearing for their lives and the lives of their children, they left Syria. Many went to Turkey but there is no path there for them to legitimacy so they continued on, trusting in many cases to rubber boats to take them to Kos or Lesbos.

Hundreds if not thousands have died in the pursuit of their dream to make it to a safe place. Overwhelmed, Europe is reacting, attempting to staunch the flow coming toward them. It is a human crisis of unfathomable dimensions.

And I sit here in this blissful spot, bothered by nothing except an occasional mosquito. I cannot comprehend the misery of the millions on the move. I accept it in the abstract but I have no visceral connection with it.

My brother probably does. He has been going to Honduras for years to deal with the lack of medical care for those who live in the back of beyond, people who have no more and sometimes less than these refugees.

Sitting on this deck, overlooking the creek, I realize what luck I have had to have been born me, in the time and place that I was. I have been spared many of the world’s travails by having been born in mid-century America.

The future has always been uncertain. I am old enough to remember “duck and cover.” As if that would have saved any of us from a nuclear blast…

But here I am in the third act of my life, seated on a deck overlooking a placid creek with the luxury of looking at the world and being able to ruminate about its meaning. I am SO lucky.

In the next months, I will probably spend more of my time in Columbia County. Last night I went to Christ Church’s “Vision Meeting” and was glad to have been present. It helped me feel connected to this place.

I may be doing some work with the local not for profit radio station, helping them with their marketing and fundraising. I am settling in to being a citizen of Columbia County as opposed to being a “weekender.”

It feels good.

The god Fortuna smiled on me when it/she brought me to this place, allowing me to settle into a home that I think had been part of my dreams since I was a child. It has been great fun to have lived in New York but I think that time is passing.

Once, when I first moved to DC I though how fortunate it was I was there. I had been allowed to know several great American cities. I have lived in Los Angeles, part time in San Francisco, Washington and now New York. How lucky is that?

I’ve never lived in Chicago and I’ve never really liked Chicago so I don’t think that’s a big miss.

I’ve seen a great deal of the world, much more than I might ever have if I had remained a high school English teacher in Minneapolis and have been a witness to two generations of technological changes and been, somehow, a part of both.

It is Easter, the most important and holiest of Christian holidays, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the central moment at the heart of the Christian religion, celebrated each day a service is held. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again, in all his glory to judge the living and the dead.

If I were in Hudson, I would be at Christ Church Episcopal, celebrating Easter with that little community, listening to my friend Lionel sing his Easter solo. There would be coffee and cakes and community afterwards and then, probably, I would have cooked an Easter dinner or a group of us would have gone out for Easter dinner.

As it is, I am some 30,000 plus feet in the air, in the final hours of the long flight from Delhi to London, where I will spend a few hours and then head on to New York and to home.

The flight has been uneventful, which is always what one wants a flight to be.

A very young lady from India has been very unhappy and has spent most of the flight screaming at regular intervals, a series of wails that soared through the cabin. She has now, I believe, exhausted herself and slipped into sleep; she lasted six and a half hours.

While I napped, I never completely fell asleep as I could hear her in the background. It reminded me of a time when I had teeth pulled. I was asleep but was going around a wheel with a candle at the bottom and every time I went round, the candle burned me.

When I boarded, I was handed a copy of yesterday’s Daily Mail from London, a paper short on news and long on gossip.

It did report the depth of unhappiness Prime Minister Netanyahu holds about the potential Iranian nuclear deal and a great deal about Nicola Sturgeon, who heads Scotland’s SNP. She may be the power broker in the general elections in Britain in May. Seems she did a right fine job of outdebating her English rivals. She’s being hailed “Queen of Scots” today. If her party wins a predicted 40 or more seats, she could align with Labour and form a government. That wouldn’t have happened since 1924.

There was also a huge exegesis of the fashion turnaround of the last ten years by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and wife of Charles, Prince of Wales.

Several juicy stories about politicians in sexual peccadillos followed.

All fascinating.

And here I am, having awakened in Delhi and, if all things go as planned, will fall asleep in New York, half a world away from where I have been living the last two weeks.

One of the things I was thinking about this morning as I was closing my suitcases was the light in India. Everything in India seemed bathed in a softer light than New York, as if light came through a filter, even when it was at its hottest and brightest. I remember thinking that in other trips to India; how different the light was. It may be the dust and the pollution or some other factor.

Indulging myself, I have been reading Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, great fun for long flights and travel. I have several of them on my Kindle.

Sitting here in my seat, I have a sense of traveling away from somewhere; a sense of movement, which I am sure, would have been intensified a century ago when the only way to India was by long sea voyage.

Today we are catapulted from one world to another, with just hours to adjust. I think I would like to have that time at sea to contemplate what I had seen, heard, felt and experienced.

Now I am rushing to make sense of things. It is the way of the world in which we live, a rush of things, a rush of information, a rush between places and a rush to assimilate the information we are receiving.

Yes, right now I would like to be on a deck chair on a steamer slowly making its way back to London so I could pause and gather my thoughts, feel my way internally through my experiences.

As I do on many Sunday mornings, I went down to Christ Church Episcopal for Sunday Services. I started a tradition a few weeks ago, lighting a candle for myself and one for my friend Tim and his wife, Vidya. Tim, who lives in London, has multiple tumors in his brain and the prognosis is not good. I am scheduled to see them on my layover in London on my way to India. We hope to have lunch and spend a few hours together before I fly off to Delhi.

After church, I ran out to Staples to get a plastic container for this year’s tax receipts and an additional international adapter for electricity. With all the devices one carries, one adapter is no longer enough.

After Staples, I went back into Hudson for Eggs Benedict on potato latkes while perusing my phone for the latest stories of the day.

The advance in Tikrit continues. Iraqi forces have chosen to pause while they work out a coordinated plan on how to deal with the snipers and booby-trapped roads. Commentators on NPR today all agreed that the loss of Tikrit would be a psychological blow to IS.

There were also more stories of young Brits and Americans who have chosen to go fight against IS.

Plus there is a story of Turkey turning back three young Brits on their way to join IS, who are now back in London and in jail.

The guessing game continues in Moscow as to where is Vladimir Putin. Likeliest explanation is that he has been felled by the flu. Least likely is that he is dead or that a secret coup has been staged.

It is no secret that Venuatu has been devastated by Cyclone Pam with no one really knowing the extent of the destruction because many of the nation’s islands have had communication cut off. Aid has begun to arrive but caregivers are estimating much, much more will be needed to get the country on its feet again.

20-year-old Jeffrey Williams has been arrested in the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, MO. He claims he was firing at someone else. In jail, he’s been held on an all cash $300,000 bail.

Robert Durst is the scion of a wealthy real estate family in New York, owning something like twenty skyscrapers in Manhattan. He admitted that he killed his neighbor and chopped him up and scattered his remains in Galveston Bay. He claimed self-defense and the jury bought it.

He is also suspected in the disappearance of his wife and in the murder of one of his closest confidants. You would think a man with this much baggage would keep a low profile but he allowed himself to be the subject of a six part docu-series on HBO called “The Jinx.” It may well have jinxed Mr. Durst. In it, there is potential new evidence regarding the death of Susan Berman, his confidante, killed just before she was to be interviewed about the disappearance of Durst’s wife.

Will make a great opera one day.

Another great opera will be one day made about the saga of Bill and Hillary Clinton. House Republicans are going to ask her to appear before them about Benghazi. Again. They are also continuing to scrutinize her use of a personal email while at the State Department.

And thinking of the State Department, I have to remember to register my trip with the American Embassy in Delhi.

Next thing on my deck is to call my oldest friend in the world – we’ve known each other since we were three – and chat with her before I leave for India.

Classical music, mostly Mozart, plays in the background. As I left for church this morning, a dusting of snow was falling and then it stopped. None falls now but we are predicted to have another three to six inches tonight.

Church was followed by a long and lazy brunch at the Red Dot; folks from Christ Church populated the table. It seemed a good third of the restaurant were folks who had been to the 10:30 service there.

We talked of many things. Some church related. Some not. I met new people, always a nice thing. As it became 3:00, I had to bid my adieu and head home so that I might get today’s blog written and still have enough time to prepare dinner. I am planning a salad followed by chicken pasta with vodka sauce.

Simple but hearty, I hope.

Simple is not a word used for the world today.

As I type, Netanyahu is flying toward the US, with some signs of tensions easing as seen by a statement from Secretary of State Kerry that he was “welcome” to speak in the US. But half of US voters, according to polls, think that the speech should have gone through Obama.

Back in Israel, 180 former military and security officers held a press conference denouncing Netanyahu’s actions, declaring that the speech was making things worse for Israel. Some of the founding generals of the group, Commanders for Israel’s Security, are legends in Israel.

Netanyahu is sparking controversy, at home and abroad.

In Russia, between 30,000 and 70,000 people marched in remembrance of Boris Nemtsov, a Putin critic, who was shot down on Friday night. There are a number of Putin critics who have been eternally silenced in the last decade. Putin has called this murder “vile” and promises to find who did it.

We will follow this.

There is now video which seems to show the three British girls who left home to join IS, have actually crossed over into Syria. Nearly 60 young British Muslims have left the UK and made the journey to Syria. Back in Britain their parents are heart broken after the girls did not heed their appeals to return home.

Iraq is reportedly about to commit to an offensive campaign to reclaim Tikrit, hometown of Saddam Hussein. At the same time a few of the Assyrian Christians that were captured by IS have been released. No reason has been given for their release though it has been noted by the press that all of them were over fifty while another report states they paid money to a Sharia Court for freedom. In the meantime, another two hundred Assyrian Christians remain in the hands of IS.

In Venezuela, several Americans have been detained for espionage and a number of American politicians, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as well as some sitting Congressman, have been banned from travel to Venezuela. President Maduro is accused by his critics of attempting to distract his country from a collapsing economy. Oil, the country’s economic backbone, has seen huge price declines in the last six months.

Down in the Washington, DC, area CPAC, a conservative political group met, and in their straw poll, chose Rand Paul over everyone else. At this conference, Scott Walker of Wisconsin said, “If I can take on a 100,000 protestors, I can take on the world.” Some took it that he was equating Union Protestors with IS and he has been having to defend his remarks, telling folks he was talking about leadership and not making a parallel between the two.

Scott Walker was number two in the CPAC straw poll.

Speaking of DC, a weeklong bill was passed that funds the Department of Homeland Security but there seems to be no long-term solution on the table. This is something to be watched this week.

I am watching the weather outside my window. The snow was supposed to have started in earnest four hours ago. It isn’t here yet and I am hoping it misses us. My snow tolerance is nearly exhausted.

It is the last day of February and, as I sit at my desk, the sun is just beginning to set. The amount of daylight is about the same now as it was in October. There are sharp shadows on the ground; soft jazz plays in the background.

It’s been a busy day. Early morning rise to do emails, followed by a run to the Post Office for a week’s worth of mail, a trip to the local Farmer’s Market held indoors in the community hall of Christ Church down in Hudson, a little cleaning, grocery shopping, a stop at the Red Dot for a bite to eat, then home to write this blog.

It was a good day. In my email this morning was one that indicated my Indian Visa has been granted so I will have to gather all the things I need to pick it up on Monday. Next comes finding a plane ticket, giving me the most luxury for the least amount of money. I am working to use miles to upgrade myself on both legs of a very long flight.

Monday I am seeing my doctor to get all my shots.

The world is reeling today from the death yesterday of Boris Nemtsov, a leading opposition figure in Russia who was gunned down while walking across a bridge last night. Every opposition figure in Russia is more frightened than they were. Nemtsov’s mother spoke frequently that she was afraid for her son’s life, afraid that Putin would have him killed.

Thousands paid tribute to him today in a march.

Putin has denounced the murder and is “personally” taking charge of the investigation of the assassination. I wonder how that will go?

In Egypt a new, even more severe anti-terrorism law has been passed. Following that, the Egyptian courts have ruled that Hamas, the Palestinian organization, is a terrorist group, pushing them further into a corner.

Also in Africa, President Mugabe of Zimbabwe threw himself a lavish million-dollar birthday party at Victoria Falls to celebrate his 91st. Yes, 91st. He is the world’s oldest head of state. It doesn’t seem to bother him that his country is desperately impoverished. Let the good times roll! Elephants were slaughtered for the feast and there were seven huge birthday cakes.

In Iraq, 37 people have died in bombing attacks, in and north of Baghdad. IS is believed to be responsible. IS controls about a third of Iraq and a third of Syria, that territory making up their so-called Caliphate.

One of that “Caliphate’s” most famous individuals, Jihadi John, has the world attempting to figure out how a nice kid from London became Jihadi John. People who knew him then say they are stunned by who he has become. Debate rages in the UK as to whether that country was responsible for turning him from the nice kid next door to the gruesome face of IS.

In Tyrone, Missouri, locals and local police are attempting to understand what triggered 36-year-old Joseph Aldredge to shoot eight people, killing seven, before turning the gun on himself. Four of the dead were his cousins. Apparently he had a history of drugs and guns and may have become unnerved at the death of his mother from lung cancer. She was found dead in her kitchen after the shootings, possibly having been dead for as long as 24 hours.

Next week, Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, will address Congress. The address, at the invitation of Speaker John Boehner, in addition to shattering protocol, has shattered the bipartisan show of support for Israel. Many Democrats will not show up for the speech. Several foreign ambassadors that have been invited have also declined. Two weeks after this speech Netanyahu faces a tough election back home.

The Administration has been accusing him of doing everything in his power to undermine the negotiations going on with Iran over their nuclear program.

It is a messy, dicey situation that will get worse before it gets better and it will be interesting to see if the Congressional speech helps or harms Netanyahu back home.

The sun is setting. I am getting ready to go to a neighbor’s for dinner. Tomorrow they are predicating more snow, which caused me to sigh audibly. This is the longest, coldest, snowiest winter I have remembered since being here.